United States

The Tribal Youth Program (TYP) Training and Technical Assistance (T/TA) Center addresses the need to strengthen American Indian and Alaska Native juvenile justice and other systems–education, mental health and social services, culture, recreation and employment programs–all critical to Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s mission of reducing juvenile delinquency, violence, child victimization, and increasing the safety of tribal communities.

Through the Higher Education Center for Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Violence Prevention, EDC helps college and community leaders develop, implement, and evaluate programs and policies to reduce student problems related to alcohol and other drug use and interpersonal violence.

EdTech Leaders® Online enables state departments of education, school districts, regional educational service centers, colleges and universities, and other educational organizations to develop local capacity to provide online professional development for teachers and administrators and online courses for students.

Supported Literacy for Adolescents is a research-based literacy program. Its goal is to improve reading, writing, and comprehension among both high-risk and typically achieving populations. The program is deeply rooted in standards-based curriculum design, and all components of the program align with national reading and writing standards, as well as selected content standards.

EDC’s e-Learning &CBA Center provides HIV/AIDS prevention training and technical assistance (TTA) services to community agencies across the United States. Its goal is to promote the delivery of evidence-based programs and practices to African American and Latino communities that are disproportionately burdened by the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

This project is developing activity materials for informal science educators who work with middle school youth as they investigate nature. It also involves controlled applied research to study how different modes of visual representations and the units impact the attitudes of the participating youth and their preparation for future learning.

Collaborators on this project are Program Evaluation and Research Group (PERG), Boston Nature Center, and the University of New Hampshire 4-H.

Child maltreatment is a serious but preventable public health issue. EDC conducted a comprehensive scan of child maltreatment prevention efforts in state public health agencies across the United States and of case studies in five states. Based on the findings from the environmental scan and the case studies, EDC identified eight key elements to enhance the primary prevention of child maltreatment.

This rigorous three-arm randomized experiment tests whether an innovative multi-year parent-mediated HIV intervention, Preparing Our Sons and Daughters for Healthy Futures, reduces HIV risks among African American youth living in high-poverty urban neighborhoods. About 1500 families with 6th graders in New York City public schools are being enrolled and will be followed through 9th grade.

The Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program is designed to increase opportunities for students and teachers to learn about and use information technologies within the contexts of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

ITEST supports:

Youth-based projects that have strong emphases on career and educational paths

The New York Comprehensive Center (NYCC) is one of 16 regional comprehensive centers that are federally funded to implement the mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). In doing so, NYCC engages the New York State Education Department in using research-based findings and rigorous evidence. The Center provides technical assistance services to meet the Department’s priority needs and further the key initiatives of the US Department of Education. Additionally, the NYCC works with the State on emerging needs based on new statutes and policy mandates.

The New England Comprehensive Center (NECC) is one of 16 regional comprehensive centers that are federally funded to implement the mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The NECC engages state education leaders in using research and best practice to meet the goals of NCLB. Our purpose is to design and deliver technical assistance services that meet education leaders’ priority needs, further the key initiatives of the U.S. Department of Education, and have the greatest potential for building states’ capacities to help districts and schools improve.

This project aims to enhance the capacity of American Indian and Alaska Native tribes’ to operate tribal juvenile detention centers that offer culturally appropriate, comprehensive support services and educational and vocational programming in green technologies to detained and reentering youth.

The goals of this program are to reduce recidivism rates and increase successful transitions back into youths’ communities, along with increased employment opportunities for them.

The Center for the Application of Prevention Technologies (CAPT) provides responsive, tailored, and outcomes-focused training and technical assistance to prevent and reduce substance abuse and associated public health issues.

E-Learning for Educators, funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Ready to Teach program, seeks to establish successful, sustainable, statewide online professional development programs that address teacher quality and student achievement goals. Through its EdTech Leaders® Online program, EDC supports this initiative by establishing a cadre of online professional development instructors and course developers within each state.

This project is designed to address high rates of juvenile delinquency in American Indian and Alaskan Native (AI/AN) communities by providing mentors for court-involved youth.

The 7th Generation staff, some of whom live in Indian country, will assist six tribes as they train up to 180 AI/AN mentors and match them with up to 180 AI/AN court-involved youth. Staff will work with the tribes to customize two effective Indian-developed approaches for mentoring youth:

Early Language and Literacy Classroom Observation (ELLCO) is a tool for evaluating and improving classroom environments and teacher practices as they relate to children’s language and literacy development. EDC offers training-of-trainers events to build a team of qualified professionals who can provide ELLCO training nationwide.

The Lesson Study Communities project provides two years of professional development and support to teams of middle and high school mathematics teachers who are involved in the lesson study model of professional development. The project operates in the Greater Boston area.

Goals include:

Enhancing knowledge of mathematics and pedagogy

Introducing teachers to lesson study

Building a community of teachers interested in lesson study

Learning how the Japanese lesson study model can be adapted to become a successful professional development model for U.S.

Funded by the National Science Foundation, Mathematics for Teaching is a joint project of EDC, the Park City Mathematics Institute (PCMI) of the Institute for Advanced Study, and the PROMYS for Teachers program of the Mathematics Department of Boston University.

Mathematics for Teachers provides specialized mathematics curriculum materials for in-service mathematics teachers. Courses are designed by EDC and PROMYS and delivered to the PCMI participants by specially trained secondary teacher-leaders.

Working with Vulcan Productions and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, EDC is developing, implementing, and evaluating a set of materials designed to help leadership teams be more effective leaders of quality instruction in their schools and districts.

The National Science Foundation has funded the Pittsburgh Public Schools’ Local Systemic Change (LSC) and Urban Systemic Programs in K–12 mathematics and science. EDC is performing an evaluation of the programs. The evaluation is formative, shaping the work of teachers, teacher leaders, and administrators, and summative, looking at the impact of the work on teaching, learning, and district policies.